So, my friend told me to drive with this on so I can avoid red light tickets
 

Pretty hilarious, but does anyone recall the story where some guy was wearing a mask and kept running red light for tickets, but claimed it was not him?

The thing my friend was talking about:
http://hypefind.com/shop/accoutrements-horse-head-mask/

The one time I accidentally ran a red in front of one of those I ducked. Someone got to see a picture of a car driving itself through a red.. I never got the ticket though!

No points can be issued if the driver is a horse. Horses do not get a driver's license.
Also, if the driver was not a horse, the 'no points' statement made depends upon the state in which the infraction occurred.

"Accidentally" can many times mean 'accident' or death... and "accidentally" means nothing to a law enforcement officer..

Here in Los Angeles County, the red light cameras have been abandoned because they became unprofitable. This is mainly because the majority of owners hide their faces, or the offenders went a foot or 2 ahead of the line. The city lost case after case. The city never took down the cameras though.

Same in Chicago. A lot of them are being taken down due to not generating enough money. Plus, if the camera cant see your face.... even if you get a ticket in the mail you can dispute it. You have a right to face your accuser directly in court. You cannot face a robot and have it defend its actions. Worked for me. Twice. Know your rights!

Thank you for that, very helpful. The situation was completely risk free and it was ran at under walking speed only due to my visibility of the turn arrow being blocked.

Yep, so long as everyone fights their tickets, it's no longer a profitable business for the city and they'll be removed.

I've been hit twice by these lights but never got any tickets. Maybe they haven't captured the plate enough either way I don't worry about these anymore

You could just not run red lights? v0v

Its a little tougher on some of the camera intersections. They have studies and graphs that show that as they shorten the yellow interval revenue goes up. In some cases they are able to get juridictions to change the timing of the intersection. the redlight camera compaines recommend short yellow and a delayed green for oncoming/crossing traffic as the ideal.

It is controversial whether they have improved safety at all as they quote statistics that include the delayed green (which is probably what reduces collisions more than the threat of a ticket). the companies keep about half the take so it can add up fast. they keep it a non-moving violation due to the enforcement issues mentioned by others and to encourage people to just pay and not fight it. they even have studies of how much they can charge in each area; they try to get as much as they can without hitting a threshold where people start to fight their tickets.

its a bizarre form of taxation by a for profit public private partnership that probably needs a bit more scrutiny but in the end isnt much different than small infamous cities that vary speed limits on thoroughfares to generate speeding ticket income (Emporia VA)

Not only are they not profitable for the jurisdictions where they are used (most of the profits go to the camera maker) but they've been shown to be unconstitutional time and time again.

That's why they're going the way of the Dodo Bird.

BTW, as someone briefly mentioned, most of the cameras are left and and even operational (just with no film) so one that's no longer being used for tickets could still flash at you and make you think you'll be ticketed. Bastards!!!

There are some cameras set up like that in my area. Some are at lights where a right turn is legal but still get flashed. I feel like the government is tracking people OR just tests for cameras.

Well that's fucking terrible. I guess that explains why yellow lights were so short when I lived in Boulder (they seemed to have a lot of red-light cameras). I still never did get ticketed but those lights made winter driving scary as all fuck (you're moving at normal driving speeds towards the intersection, light goes yellow and gives you about two or three seconds to stop... not fun when there isn't much grip or you're driving an old Land Rover... definitely not fun when both conditions are true at the same time.

Still, I can see why people would want red light cameras. When I lived in Denver I lived near a busy intersection of two, four-lane avenues. Every day I'd cross that intersection walking to school and I'd see people running the shit out of red left-turn lights... sometimes you'd see the light go red and 2-3 more cars would just amble on through as though nothing was out of the ordinary. You basically had to just sit on the curb for the first 5-6 seconds of the "walk" signal to avoid getting run down by morons. Even after a student was killed at the same intersection by a red-running SUV nothing was done to either adjust the timing of the lights to alleviate the massive backup of cars that always accumulated at the intersection or dissuade people from running the reds. Meanwhile the city continued to pay some corporation to place speed camera vans in deserted construction zones at night so they could try and illegally extort money from people doing 35mph on well-lit, sparsely-trafficked, ruler-straight 4-lane roads.

'Murka.

I read a story of a guy wearing a gorilla mask who was able to get out of Toll Road tickets.

Just read this article this morning, via Overlawyered.com: http://wtkr.com/2014/02/04/red-light...are-too-short/

Redlight cameras take driver's face? Here they take picture of the license plate..

I rarely had a problem stopping for red lights (there was one time in Boulder driving an old Discovery where I was pretty curious about whether I'd stop or not, but that is the only incident I can recall), but short yellows definitely feel unsafe; when I have to threshold brake because of traffic engineers' ineptitude I get pretty mad. I can definitely see how it would be difficult for people who are driving clumsy SUVs, poorly-tyred cars or commercial vehicles to stop.

I don't mind the idea of red-light cameras in areas where lights are properly-timed though. There definitely are plenty of asshats who seem to think, "Oh, it only just turned red-- I'll just go real quick because I don't want to sit in this turn lane for another five minutes."

That's just the thing, engineers generally have nothing to do with the way roads are run (sadly). Most engineers argue that speed limits should be much higher, but increasing the speed limits instead of keeping them artificially low for what the road can handle would only cut revenue.


There was a group going around suing cities for having short yellow lights on the intersections with the cameras (they compared to the other lights in the area). One could do this themselves if they so desired as a defense as it was considered entrapment (YMMV).


There's also fun statistics showing the accident rates for intersections with the cameras is higher because people will slam on their brakes at a yellow light and get rear ended. It's not about safety, it's about money.

Film? Are we in the 90s? Every red light camera I've seen is a digital SLR. It probably doesn't even have a flash memory card installed, but just a direct connection from the camera to a computer that's remotely located somewhere offsite that automatically prints out your ticket.

I have some Kodachrome 8mm color movie film for sale. Processing not included.:bellyroll:

At least here red light violations based on a camera are a no point ticket. They could not care less who was driving. The owner of the car gets the bill regardless.

This is true. While I've never gotten a red light ticket I would also fight it.